Gorica Dodik Hits Back at Amanpour and Kokalari on X
The first reaction from Milorad Dodik's family to the affair over Trump's advisers in Banja Luka came on X, with insults aimed at two female journalists.
Gorica Dodik, daughter of SNSD president Milorad Dodik, posted a series of messages on X on October 8, 2026, and through the night about the affair involving Trump’s advisers in Banja Luka. It is news for Serbia and the region because it is the first public reaction from the Dodik family to a story that has drawn heavy attention in the United States, and media in the region are carrying the posts today.
The story concerns two men close to U.S. President Donald Trump who stayed in Banja Luka and advised Milorad Dodik and his party. We covered it earlier from the American angle, in a piece on how Jeffries attacked Leavitt and Blair over their work for Dodik.
What did Gorica Dodik write about the lobbyists?
In her first post she named CNN host Christiane Amanpour, who has covered Dodik and the lobbying by Trump’s advisers. Gorica Dodik wrote:
“Those who have lobbied for years for pro-Bosniak politics and spread its anti-Serb propaganda, taking huge amounts of money for it, have spoken up. Christiane Amanpour, along with other proven Serb-haters, is leading yet another in a series of orchestrated campaigns following a well-tried recipe.”
That framed the attention the affair received in America as the work of lobbyists, not as a consequence of hiring advisers from Trump’s circle.
She went on to reply to other users’ posts with photos and footage from the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, claiming they showed “Muslim extremists”. To one X user she attached a video of the 2011 attack on the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo, with the line: “If you haven’t seen it, this is one of yours who attacked the embassy.” In another reply she wrote: “Those are the people who don’t respect Dayton, and you defend them.”
Why was Evi Kokalari a target too?
She answered Evi Kokalari most sharply. Kokalari is a conservative activist and journalist of Albanian origin from MAGA circles. Kokalari had written that Milorad Dodik is close to Putin, and Gorica Dodik dismissed the claims about a pro-Russian circle as propaganda from the era of Joe Biden. According to media in the region, she also called Kokalari “Biden’s poodle”.
To Kokalari she wrote:
“You are a sick woman full of hatred and you need treatment. If there were justice, you would end up in prison for all the lies you write about Milorad.”
The posts thus moved from accusations against lobbyists to personal insults aimed at a journalist, while the quoted messages say nothing about Dodik’s relationship with Russia, which Kokalari had raised.
How does this connect to the U.S. sanctions?
Gorica Dodik herself was previously on the U.S. sanctions list. According to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), as cited by N1, the sanctions on Milorad Dodik and related persons were lifted on October 29, 2025. Her posts came less than a year after that, as Dodik and his party are again at the center of American attention over advice they received from people in Trump’s circle.
In her messages, Gorica Dodik presents the affair as an orchestrated campaign, just as she put it in her first post.
